New month and new veggies to pick

The surest sign of a change in the weather on the farm is when the wind picks up significantly for a few days.

In the last couple of days the wind has been ever present coupled with cloudy skies for the majority of the day.

The start of October is beginning with this change in weather that is even bringing a few sprinkles of rain and on the farm many fall veggies are starting to be harvested.

After being planted in the field just over a month ago they have grown rapidly with the warm sunny days and being irrigated often to reduce the stress.

Starting today we will have the first of our fall chard and red russian kale to go along with the arugula that we started harvesting last week.

The chard and kale have been growing very quickly in the last two weeks and their leaves are very tender with all the rapid growth.

In the next couple of weeks we will have the rest of the bunching greens as they are still too small to harvest right now.

The hours for the Wednesday Davis Farmers Market have changed starting today with the end of Picnic in the Park. The hours are 3-6 p.m. with the sun setting early every week.

At the farmers market we currently have yellow and red onions, garlic and starting today we will be adding leeks to the display. The leeks have a milder flavor and are a more subtle oniony flavor.

The leeks were the first crop for harvest this fall that we seeded and planted as they take a long time to grow. We started them in the greenhouse in February and transplanted them in the field in May where they have been growing with lots of sun and water.

Another crop we have that feels very timely for the cloudy weather that is occurring is winter squash. We are growing four different varieties and will have three of them at market beginning today. They are the Honeynut, Delicata and Butterbaby.

Honeynut has a delicious and sweet flavor that makes it perfect to roast and eat by itself. Delicata are very sweet and have a tender skin that can be eaten which gives it a wide diversity of ways to be cooked. Butterbaby is the miniature version of the butternut that we grow and has a great butternut flavor.

In addition to the winter squash we will have a few decorative pumpkins to add to the fall theme. The variety that grew for us this year is a small white stacking pumpkin which we will have in limited amounts due to poor germination of the seed.

All these fall veggies and change in weather doesn’t mean we still don’t have summer veggies. We are still harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, okra and basil.

The weather will determine for how much longer we are able to harvest them as we are harvesting less of them every week.